Gary Wright - The Dreamweaver

Just about everyone's heard "Dream Weaver" - I suppose Wayne's World can take credit for that (although it is a different version, he did like to re-record this song). Still, when I found this album I was pretty stoked, as I happen to like that song, but I really liked "Love Is Alive" and I'll be honest, I'd forgotten about that one until I dropped the needle. Then it was, "Holy mackerel. I love this song."

While my dollar-bin copy didn't have an insert, there were decent credits on the back cover, and it was cool to see names like David Foster, drummers Andy Newmark and Jim Keltner, and even a guitar cameo by Ronnie Montrose on "Power of Love." It's the only guitar on the album, and it comes at the close of the first side.

After setting the tone with the various keyboards and special effects on the first four songs, I actually didn't even notice the guitar the first time through. Dang, even on the second pass it was there, but just part of what drove the song. I guess it served the song, but seems like a waste of a marquee name.

Gary makes a point of mentioning on the back cover that "this is an album of keyboard music." With the exception of drums and vocals, all the music heard was produced by keyboard instruments. Which is pretty cool, and I'm glad that this was made in 1975 because a few years later no doubt he'd have used drum machines, and removed one of the elements that make this so enjoyable.

The interplay and tension between organic and synthetic.

It also doesn't hurt that Gary has a great voice.

The second side opens with "Dream Weaver." It's been a while since I've sat and listened to this. I'd actually kind of forgotten how cool this song is.

I do like the Moog bass, especially when combined with the acoustic drums. The rhythm section it underpins everything. It's not an understatement to say this reverberated through future popular music and even progressive rock. Heck, SAGA would use Moog bass, and still does.

The spacey ending was no doubt heard by John Hall from Prism, and I suspect influenced "Spaceship Superstar." Makes me wonder if Chris de Burgh heard this before writing "A Spaceman Came Travelling." Considering both were from 1975, but his was later in the same year, it would make for an interesting coincidence, but is unlikely.

"Much Higher" takes the delayed keyboard riff from "Love Is Alive," slows it down, and marries it to a mid-tempo rock groove. It's a decent callback to the opening track and fits the tone of the album and is enjoyable in the context of the record, but not something that perks my ears up.

The album closes out with a pretty forgettable song, "Feel for Me," that just sort of played in the background.

While this wasn't full of killer songs, two of the nine are so good they lift the entire album. The worst I can say is the other songs are decent but not memorable, and at least they didn't suck.

That would have tanked the album for me - killer songs or not.

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and it was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the '90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984, my (dearly departed and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy, which included a bonus track of "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." When I eventually bought the album, I didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read, just go back and skim it. I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off-and-on-again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. At the time, though, all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the opening cut, "Baby Come Back," then proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another bef...

Garfield - Strange Streets

I'd seen this before in the bin, but kept flipping through the stacks. I'd see it a few more times, each time stopping to look at it a little more. There was something kind of cool about the cover where the stylized Celtic knot had the dotted yellow line - it was a strange street for sure. I pulled the record out of the jacket and I was struck by the centre image. There was the familiar Mercury label, the same one I'd seen a thousand times on BTO's Head On album. Well, I'd bought things based on odd associations before - like when I had to buy anything that Solid Rock Records released (this was generally a good thing) - so who knows, maybe this was a hidden gem. There weren't any real scratches or rash, just a lot of dirt and dust. It seemed to clean up okay, but we'll see how it goes. The album opens with the title track, and this wasn't straight-ahead pop or rock. It was leaning toward the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough, the vocals rem...

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